Transcripts keep track of a student’s personal information, courses they have taken by semester, and which letter grades they have received. Transcripts tell how many credit hours they have earned and calculate a grade point average (GPA). So the high school transcript will start with grade 9 and go through the currently enrolled semester. When your student graduates, you will complete your transcript with grades 9 – 12 and have a final GPA. Colleges who have already accepted your student will want you to mail the completed transcript to them, and they may differ in what homeschoolers need to do to make it official. The University of Kentucky just requires a signature from the parent. Also, your will need to include your child’s social security number if they are receiving any type of financial aid from the college.

HSLDA has some wonderful resources to help with transcripts and GPA’s. 

How much credit is a class worth?

One credit in high school is 120 to 180 hours of work. An elective course might be 120 credit hours, and a science course with a lab might be 180 hours. You do not need to keep track of the time for most courses; if your student spends 50 minutes a day for the school year, that course will receive 1 credit hour (1/2 hour per semester). If your student spends 60 hours throughout the school year on a class, like the labs at Asbury University, then given them 1/4 credit per semester, or 1/2 credit for the year. HSLDA also has good information on this.

If your student takes a Dual Enrollment college class, give them twice the amount of credit. College classes typically move at twice the rate of high school classes. So a one semester 3-hour college class is equivalent to 1 credit.  I would not award credit at this rate for AP classes; they are college-level material taught at the high school rate. So the AP Calculus AB class takes one school year, but is equivalent to about Calculus I and part of Calculus II. The AP Calculus BC course is equivalent to Calculus I and II of college. 

Also note that you should not give high school credit for high school courses taken in middle school. If a student competes Algebra 1 in 8th grade, I would list it on the transcript, but I would not give credit for that. Your student still needs to complete four years of math in high school.

Sample Transcript

I just used a spreadsheet to create my transcript. Here is a sample of one I use:  Sample Transcript

Feel free to download and edit this one. If possible, the transcript should fit on one page. I use a different spreadsheet and save it as a Microsoft file, so I apologize if the spacing on the page doesn’t look quite right. You can click the columns with your mouse and resize them as needed. You will also need to calculate your own GPA.